


Absolution (rewritten, original)

by ice_hot_13



Category: Original Work
Genre: Hockey, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way Ryan loves Xavier cannot be the sin Xavier believes it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absolution (rewritten, original)

**Author's Note:**

> A re-written version of Absolution; turned in for an application to the creative writing program. Some new paragraphs!

Every day, there are crosses.

            It’s there, in the way sticks clash at centre ice, pushing against each other before tearing apart, this first fight of the game. Sometimes it distracts him, this cross he’s learned how to win. It’s pushing harder and getting what he wants, and this, he wishes this worked in every fight, if he could always get what he wants just by trying as hard as he can.

            It comes again, in invisible lines as they cross each other’s paths, carving crosses into the ice. He sees them, etched onto the very ground of his home. Even when the ice is clean, he sees them. They skate and fight on top of crosses, invisible crosses that sink into the ice through their skates and can never be avoided.

            He sees these because they match the one he cannot escape. The little silver cross on the necklace Xavier wears, the one that haunts Ryan, something he cannot beat and cannot stop fighting. He can practically feel it on Xavier’s skin. It’s the embodiment of what he hates, the thing that makes Xavier hesitate, give in only to hate himself, obey only to hurt himself. Ryan hates it because it hurts him, both of them, because this is a place where two things meet that cannot touch.

            Some nights, he avoids it like it will burn him, his hands everywhere else, feels watched.

            Some nights, he lays kisses along it, as if Xavier’s moans can mock it, as if his own gentleness ever had a chance of defeating it.

            This thing, it holds Xavier in a way that Ryan never will, the kind of hold Ryan never wants to have over someone. He pieces together a past he was not witness to, one that took place in beautiful buildings filled people and empty silence, colourful windows that let in changed light. He can imagine Xavier, as a small child, tiny hands folded as he tried to stay perfectly still. He can imagine Xavier as a lanky preteen, whispering in colloquial French Ryan wouldn’t have been able to understand. He can imagine Xavier as a quiet teenager, and by then, he would have been drawing attention to himself on the ice, inspiring marvel with skates and a stick. By then, he would already have that deep sense of shame instilled in him, the guilt that would throw him off balance, keeping secrets until he left the east coast, until he found Ryan, and something worth all he’d suffered through.

            Ryan knows the words he cannot understand, which speak to him through their tone, secret whispers he is not meant to hear, words he stays awake to listen for, because he’s waiting for the night they don’t come. It’s a night he doesn’t talk about, doesn’t know if it would be his victory, or Xavier’s defeat.

 _“Dieu qui es au cieux”_ is the melody of everything he hates. These are words that make Xavier cry tears he hides; they should be just words, and how Ryan wishes they were. They possess a power he can’t touch.

          On nights like these, pretending to be asleep, Xavier trembling with silent tears, they feel like mere words with an inexplicable power they don’t deserve. Those words, this cross, they hold Xavier tighter than Ryan can, an iron grip he is no match to. Everything he has cannot hold up, and he hates that he is incapable of understanding why. It’s as if he can’t see what it gives Xavier besides pain, how something that forsakes Xavier can have him when Ryan cannot. All he sees is the way this cross makes Xavier hate what they do; he’s never dared ask if Xavier hates the emotions too, because this is his own greatest fear. Xavier trembles for fear of his greatest sin, and Ryan, Ryan cannot face a truth that would ruin him.

         When Xavier prays, Ryan cannot understand the words. He doesn’t know if Xavier prays for forgiveness, or to be accepted, absolved, clean of this flaw that has ruined him. Ryan doesn’t know if Xavier prays to keep him, or be free of him. He doesn't, and doesn't want to know, because their love cannot be the sin Xavier believes it is, but Xavier still believes it. 

          Xavier is more wrecked when they are at home. When hockey takes them to another city, when they are in unfamiliar hotel rooms, it’s different, like they have escaped this thing that has so tight a hold on Xavier. When they are in their home city, Xavier falls apart after he thinks Ryan is asleep. He hides it well, and Ryan believes he almost forgets it sometimes. What Ryan has to give him should be untouchable, and for a few hours, it is. This cross, Ryan hates it, because it keeps Xavier from feeling the same way he does. This love he has for Xavier, it holds him, suspended above an entire world of pain and rejection, because he has what he wants, he’s found the place that was waiting for him. There’s a disconnect, for Xavier; this cross, all it represents, keeps him from fitting into place, makes him linger before it, staring at the place that he belongs, refusing to let him stay. He hides there for a while, when he lets Ryan’s arms close around him, until that thing draws him away again. Some days, he has a stronger hold on staying, days he kisses Ryan with wild abandon, and it almost feels like a celebration, like this time, he won’t be drawn away again. He always loses in the end.

                Sometimes, Ryan wonders. He’s afraid the disconnect means he’s only hurting Xavier in the end, that for all he can give, he will always lose. He would give  _everything,_ if Xavier would let him, if there were the slightest chance he might win against this powerful, untouchable entity composed of promises that break and embraces that falter. Sometimes, he cannot believe that Xavier would pray for permission to stay with him, because that is a permission that will never come, and to wait for it like this is to chase it forever.

                In the dark, he listens to Xavier’s barely audible whisper, the murmured,  _“Dieu qui es au ciel,”_ the words that follow.  _“Pardonne mes péchés,”_ he hears, the hitch in the words that destroys him slowly. Maybe this is his personal punishment, to have everything he wants only at this cost, to watch the man he loves being slowly, agonizingly torn apart by it.  _“Comptez pas mes transgressions, mais, plutôt, mes larmes de repentir. Rappelez-vous pas mes iniquités, mais, plus particulièrement, ma douleur pour les infractions que j’ai commises contre vous.”_ This is the part where the words are weaker, quaver with something Ryan cannot understand. This is where Xavier sobs, repeats  _il a pas de sens,_ so quietly and so desperately, like these words are something to hold onto.

                Ryan hates this, that Xavier doesn’t tell him what any of this means, that he thinks Ryan doesn’t know, that this may all be his fault.

                “Xavier,” he whispers, reaching a hand to skim Xavier’s trembling shoulder. Xavier says nothing, frozen under his hands. Ryan draws Xavier into his arms, holds him close, and there, Xavier starts to sob.

                 _“Je suis désolé, mais il va jamais être assez,”_ Xavier whispers, and Ryan doesn’t understand, on so many different dimensions.

                “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ryan asks softly, and Xavier’s hold on him tightens.

                “Because,” he whispers, “I can’t- fight it, and I…” Ryan hears what he cannot say, that Xavier thinks himself weak, though Ryan doesn’t know if Xavier thinks he’s too weak to break away and allow himself to be given over to this, or too weak to stop seeing Ryan at all.

                “If you’d be happier without me,” Ryan says, and it breaks everything inside him, but that’s better than Xavier breaking like he is, slowly, painfully, “we can stop.”

                “Someone that really loves you shouldn’t be able to let you go,” Xavier says, and the desperation, the rushing tumble of the words, Ryan knows. This is something Xavier tells himself, but not about Ryan.

                “I know,” Ryan says, “but if it’s better for you, I love you enough to leave if you need me to. I can’t let you go, Xavier, but I can leave you if that’s what you need.”

                Xavier doesn’t say anything. He breaks down into harsh sobs and Ryan holds him tight. The only prayer he hears for the rest of the night is his own, a prayer for everything to turn out okay, and it’s one he’s scared to make, unsure whether if he prays like Xavier does, it’ll come true in a way that isn’t right by him.

                Instead, he prays to whatever force that gave him Xavier, because Xavier is one of the few perfect, amazing things in his life, and whatever gave him this must love them both.

 

          Xavier goes home for a month during the summer, and Ryan only hears from him sporadically, random texts that aren’t a substitute for what he wants, things he fears will someday replace what he wants to have.

  1.                 On an unnaturally warm night in July, he’s watching a classic hockey game when he hears his front door open. When Xavier walks in, it’s like the entire night changes, like his loneliness never existed, like this was always a moment he could depend on, wait for.         



         Xavier climbs over the back of the couch and shoves Ryan onto his back, leaning over him and kissing him hard.

                “Miss me?” Ryan asks, grinning up at him. The smile he gets isn’t one he’s ever seen before, and it takes him a while to understand what’s missing.

                The guilt. The guilt is gone. Xavier looks at him like he’s the only thing in the world, like the thing that haunted them has gone, decided to leave them alone.

                “Like I’ve been away forever,” Xavier kisses him again and again, until it’s all Ryan knows.

                The cross is still there around Xavier’s neck, but it says something different now. It’s childhood memories and simplified concepts, it’s being assured by people that have proved their love for him that he can’t sin by loving someone like this, because this, this could never be anything but a heavenly perfection.

                Late that night, Xavier asleep peacefully at his side for the very first time, Ryan remembers the only prayer he’s ever made. He never prayed for absolution because he never needed it, could only achieve it by having Xavier just like this, happy and at peace with himself; what he needs is Xavier, and here he is, completely here, absolved because he felt the love that made Ryan pray to have him. This is the only thing Ryan can believe in, this love he has for Xavier and whatever it was that brought them together, because this has never abandoned him, because every moment with Xavier is proof of its ethereal beauty.

                This, the way it feels to be with Xavier, is something Ryan can believe in. 

 


End file.
